At the time we started AccelerEyes, all the founders were PhD students at Georgia Tech. While our business was unrelated to our PhD research (which focused on computer vision algorithms), we wanted to be extra sure that there was no IP ownership ambiguity with the university. We took the following precautionary steps:
- Fully disclosed our work (“invention”) to the Georgia Tech Office of Technology Licensing and explained that no Professors were involved with the company (which is the main differentiator). We politely asked them for a waiver of IP rights saying that our ability to pursue this opportunity was greatly stressed if there was ambiguity in the IP ownership with the university. They kindly provided a waiver letter for us.
- We stopped taking Georgia Tech Graduate Research Assistantship funding from our PhD advisor, including paying our own tuition and fees. From that point forward, we did all our PhD work for free. This step further eliminated any ambiguity about IP ownership. It was hard to not draw those salaries and pay the tuition. It placed an even greater financial strain on our bootstrapped position, but in hindsight it was the right thing to do.
The challenges of starting a company are even greater when the founders are only partially able to work on the company. But each startup has to makes its own decisions about when to break out into undistracted mode.
As a student, did you (or do you) consider starting a company? Have you thought about the potential IP relationship between yourself and the university?
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